I’m sort of an accidental, unintentional vegetarian pretty frequently. I like meat, but I don’t cook it that often. I guess I consume it more if I go out to eat. On the other hand… animal PRODUCTS, by which I mean dairy? Dairy I can’t do without. Today, not thinking about it: oatmeal for breakfast, tea with cream. Then black beans and rice, with queso fresco, salsa, and crema, for dinner. And some nuts and dried fruit, at some point. And grapefruit juice. Hmm. There is a conspicuous absence of actual vegetables there.

Well, why, if I may ask? Because what you’ve said is a very different story from “I would like to eat more vegetables.”

If you keep it at 1 vegetarian day a week, that’s no biggie. But I was a vegan for 18 months and I can tell you that trying to cut down on meat and animal products IS painful and not rewarding–UNLESS you have a compelling reason.

I want to reduce my footprint because I believe it’s socially responsible. I’m not interested in veganism and at this point it’s unlikely that I’ll become fully vegetarian. It’s a matter of scaling back, and reminding myself that it’s a good idea to scale back further.

It’s not really a big deal. I only wrote about it because I was interested in sharing the idea of doing something one day a week as a particular kind of discipline.

It makes me angry and genuinely sad that it’s come down to this. For us to be responsible citizens of the world we now have to declare war on our eating habits. I can’t help the feeling that we’re being played.